Sunday, November 11, 2012

Two Putt Tommy analyzes David Hann. Shame on Strib for what must be a deliberate non-mention of Boys and Tyler.

Strib reporting online, here, that Minnesota Senate Republicans picked David Hann as their minority leader for the next post-election legislative session. His employment status was "sort of" mentioned in the concluding four paragraphs:

Hann also attracted attention during a budget dispute with Gov. Mark Dayton in 2011, when Archbishop John Neinstedt warned legislators against cutting programs for the poor.

In a letter to the Archbishop, Hann wrote: "I was extremely disappointed to learn you endorse the socialist fiction that it is a moral necessity to take the property of the 'wealthy' under the assumption that those resources are better used by politicians and bureaucrats than by the individuals who earn them."

Hann had been a member of the Eden Prairie school board before joining the Senate, and was employed for 22 years by E. A. Sween Co., whose brand name is Deli Express.

While in college, he joined the Army and received the Army Commendation Medal for service in Vietnam. He got a degree in religion from Gustavus Adolphus College and then did graduate work in theology at the University of Chicago.

So where does the good gentleman work NOW, collecting a paycheck from which hand that feeds him, while having employer paid health coverage along with or above and beyond that coverage we taxpayers pay for him, via his Senate employment?

Go ahead, read Strib, and you have no clue. Ditto, Wikipedia (at least in its current Nov. 11, morning edit on Hann).

Open that Strib report and do a word search for either "Boys" or "Tyler." Tommy Johnson gets a hat tip for having done his research, and for thus having done us all a big favor in helping us understand Sen. Hann, who the man is and how open he is about himself and his likely biases regarding healthcare policy in Minnesota. I expect many Crabgrass readers, without reading further, can by now guess the business sector having the hand that reaches out to feed this Republican Hann gentleman.

Well -

In the following, I will post links as retrieved via Google, where some stories are reposting or double postings, - while noting that I learned the story before the election when Tommy posted on Minnesota Progressive Project and his own Two Putt Tommy website of what he had to report, and KOS and other items may be cumulative. Follow the links from there.

These Mainstream Media links: City Pages, here. MinnPost, here and here. A hat tip to each, for practicing journalism as it should be.

Links showing the base investigative reporting, again without overlap edited out: Here (Tommy, with the basic links over to other items), here (again Tommy, with links); and Kos, e.g., here, here, and here. MPP, here, post-election. This link.

That should be enough to get the story across of a cover-up, or at least call it attempted pulling of the wool over our eyes.

How can anyone trust the man now, hiding relevant personal information as he does? What else would he hide under a rock? True motivations for his role in engineering the Koch-Brodkorb purge, such as just possibly, personal ambition?

This sort of thing bothers me more as basis to resign office, than a general heading the CIA having a roving pecker. Or at least as much. Read it all. Decide for yourself.

___________UPDATE__________
And where does the Honorable Minnesota Republican Representative Steve Gottwalt have employment -- which hand feeds him as he endeavors to set Minnesota's healthcare policy?

UNRELATED: Here, of course having nothing to do with Boys and Tyler, is an online picture of a concentration of pond scum.

__________UPDATE__________
This is very important work Johnson has done. I cannot overemphasize its importance. Now when the DFL majorities will see these individuals talking against progressive healthcare implementation in our state, they and all citizens will know it is not only the minds of Gottwalt and Hann speaking on behalf of industry interests, but it is the voice of their pocketbooks loudly speaking too. That is insightful. Both Hann and Gottwalt are taking regular money from industry interests, while advocating and voting for the paymasters' interests.

Unswerving serving of the public interest gets tainted with the appearance of impropriety, when serving pecuniary self-interest and the paymasters' interests may be ruling the day, with the only question being whether there is some quid pro quo prior agreement to be discovered causing Minn. Stat. Sect. 609.42 "BRIBERY," to be a consideration in judging cause and effect.

The story was first reported by local political blogger TwoPuttTommy. Tommy noted that Hann vaguely describes his occupation as "business process consultant" on his website, the official Senate website, and in campaign finance filings. Yet according to a tweet published last month by Twila Brase, president and co-founder of the conservative Citizens' Council for Health Freedom, Hann is now working in the insurance industry:

News Today at MAHU forum: Sen. DAVID HANN (R-MN) has license to sell insurance, has joined Boys & Tyler Financial & is now on a MAHU board.
-- Twila Brase (@twilabrase) October 4, 2012

A Fox 9 report notes that there are plenty of precedents of legislators regulating industries they work in, but according to government expert David Schultz, Hann's lack of transparency makes his case unique.

"The fact that he appears to have gone out of his way not to disclose work appears to lend suspicion that he's hiding it for reasons that he wants to hide," Schultz told Fox.

Compounding the appearance of a conflict of interest is the fact that Hann's Health Committee co-chair, Rep. Steve Gottwalt, R-St. Cloud, is also an associate at Tyler Financial. So what are these guys thinking about when considering possible insurance industry regulations, their bank accounts or taxpayers? Because at least in some instances, it seems as though the best interests of one or the other will come into conflict.

In the MinnPost report, DFL chair Ken Martin says, "The reality is that you have to call into question someone's ethics when the job they are paid to do conflicts with his Senate chairmanship of a committee that provides oversight to the industry."

Hann, for his part, says he hasn't "pursued all the requirements necessary by Minnesota law to become an insurance salesman." But according to Fox, that's only because no company has authorized him to write a policy yet. "That, however, is a very quick process," Fox's Tom Lyden writes.

It stinks.

__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
While the Strib report mailed in the "employment" situation by lifting the GOP press release disclosure, looking nowhere else, what is interesting about the Strib item is the comment thread. Nobody saying, "good choice." Instead, saying the opposite; and that's without the responding readers knowing about Boys and Tyler; and money to Hann in line with how he has voted, and how we surely may expect him to posture in the future. Single payer in Minnesota should run over Hann and his employer and their confederates like a runaway downhill logging truck with failed brakes.

___________FURTHER UPDATE___________This link. Eric Pusey in that MPP item uses the term "craven journalism" which perhaps misses the mark, and arguably should be "mail it in non-journalism" or "gross negligence journalism" or "I can read a press release why do more journalism."

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